Author Archive

This year has been an excellent year for chipmusic using nanoloop. We’ve had a huge amount of releases ranging from the astounding ‘Geothermal’ by Classic Mistake, to the chilled as hell ‘Vanilla Dome’ by Glooms. This time we have Boaconstructor’s ‘Winds Of Null’. For context into ‘Boaconstructor’, he is a Seattle based musician who also runs ‘The Base bit’, one of the go-to net labels of chiptune. ‘The Base Bit’ have released a variety of accomplished albums such as ‘Refresh’ from Trey Frey, to ‘Steel City Zone’ by ‘HarleyLikesMusic’. It has been three years since ‘Boaconstructor’ has produced an album, with ‘Loop Dreams’ being released in 2015.

Whilst ‘Loop Dreams’ and ‘Winds Of Null’ were produced using Nanoloop, they are vastly different albums. ‘Loop Dreams’ focuses on using modulation to create weird and wonderful noises on a high BPM. ‘Winds Of Null’ on the other hand, focuses more on the bass, as well as detuning the melody and slowing down the music. For me I prefer Boaconstructor’s latest album, as I found it more accessible to listen to. The recording and mastering are also, in my opinion, much higher quality. Everything seems to pop better, with the levels balanced much better than ‘Loop Dreams’.

It is funny how plans can be altered within a second. Originally, I was going to review something else.However, just as I was about to put fingers to keyboard, I got an email: ‘Paladin Shield’ had just released a new album; ‘Many Blessings’! ‘Hot damn’, I said as I spent more money on yet another album. Below are three tracks that I loved off ‘Many Blessings’ and why I think it’s top notch.

For this month I’ve been really busy with a variety of different chiptune projects, and so I’m doing a reblog of an Article I wrote back in early 2018. ‘Classic Mistake’ is a an artist I’ve only recently come across, beginning with a cover of 0F Digital’s, ‘Mesh’ and featured in ‘The Great Australian Barbecue Bash’ compilation. What I liked about ‘Classic Mistake’ is that he almost exclusively uses ‘Nanoloop 2.0’, creating some fantastic hooks which are reminiscent to early techno. ‘Geothermal’ is Classic Mistake’s first album released under ‘Cheapbeats’. Below I have selected three tracks that stood out for me of ‘Geothermal’.

Whilst everyone is engaged with the Chiptunes = WIN compilation over August, one of 2018’s greatest chip albums has just been released; ‘A Vision of Light’ by Canadian 16bit based band, ‘Villainest’. It’s been a while since their last album, ‘A Good Day to Try Hard’ was brought to my attention, much to critical acclaim. I reviewed it on ChipWIN, giving it high praise, also rating track ‘The Machine’ as one of my ‘Top 10 songs of 2017’. ‘A Good Day To Try Hard’ was a great introduction to an already incredible band, however it is nothing when to compared to their latest release ‘A Vision of Light’. How you may ask? Let’s find out through a few tracks that picked my fancy.

This week instead of the normal chipmusic that I usually review, I thought we’d look at something slightly different with the latest compilation by ‘Kitty On Fire Records’. For those who haven’t heard of them, ‘Kitty On Fire Records’ is a net label that releases all things Heavy electronic. This includes the genres associated with chiptune, such as ‘Nintendocore’, ‘Anime Breakcore’, ‘Glitch’, ‘Digital Hardcore’ and many more. I’ve been following ‘Kitty On Fire’ for a while now, with my biggest purchase being the cassette edition of this album.

This is forth installment of the compilation, which features 1-2 tracks from several artists across the world. For this release I’ll be reviewing three mind shattering tracks that really hooked me.

For this week’s review, I have the distinct pleasure of reviewing the newest album of one of my biggest influences – HarleyLikesMusic’s new ‘Steel City Zone’ as released on Thebasebit. I’ve known Harley for a few years now, first meeting him just before he got into making music on LSDJ and to say his music leaves an impression would be an understatement. After two wildly successful albums released on the Cheapbeats label, Harley is back again with his old tricks – and some new ones too. As someone who cites Harley as a major influencer of my own techniques, I think I’m quite lucky that I get the chance to talk about this with you – it’s not often one gets to discuss someone who has brought so much to the LSDJ game.